


Pawn

by metaphlame



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Binge Drinking, Case Fic, Gen, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-31
Packaged: 2018-01-10 06:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1156076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaphlame/pseuds/metaphlame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year to the day after Sherlock's jump, John is mugged. When he finds his jacket again, there's a note in the pocket that changes everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> The rating will likely go up but I couldn't move it ahead of time as I've tossed the 20-some pages that came after this in favor of starting fresh. Additionally, this hasn't been Britpicked, as I thought it would be more polite, on my end, for someone to actually like what I'm doing before I bothered them for help. I've read so many amazing fics over the last few days that my displeasure with my own only continues to grow. Which is why everything I wrote with Sherlock in it needs to be reworked.

John had discovered a curious thing in the months since Sherlock's death. In bed, failing to sleep, if he closed his eyes and moved them, beneath the lids, as though he were spinning--if he held the thought in his head that he was spinning and didn't let go--then his body could feel it. Usually a useless skill, it had been employed by his subconscious recently to devastating effect: one memory, replayed, over and over again whether he wished it or not. Himself, standing on a dreary cold night in a train yard before a wall where so recently bright yellow spray-paint had spelled out an unreadable code across the bricks; and Sherlock, his clammy hands pressed to either side of John's face, spinning him. Questioning him, demanding of him, around and around, if he did in fact remember the code before it had been painted over. _Can you remember it? Can you remember the pattern? Are you certain?_ "Yes, I am!" He had cried. Really. That "really"—no question mark about it, all dripping and smirky--killed him every time. It woke him in a cold sweat, dizzy and sick to his stomach. Oh, he remembered all right. Too well.

"What are you doing?" he'd yelped when Sherlock had first grabbed him, but he hadn't fought. Hadn't twisted away. It seemed so odd now to think of it--what sensible person would permit another adult to grab his face and spin him about by it in a dingy train yard at night? But he'd let it happen. Around and around. If John closed his eyes after cold sweats like this, he saw Sherlock's face again, spinning. The nausea wrapped around the core of his sadness like the skin around a wizened little apple, and he ached.

***

A year to the day after Sherlock jumped, John took the day off work and stayed home to drink. He did not pick up the paper or check his mail or phone messages. He wanted nothing to do with anyone or anything that might remind him, even inadvertently, of the friend he'd lost. Towards the evening, though, when the bright stripes of sunlight streaming through the blinds in his sparse flat that was in no way 221B stretched long across the floor, he ran out of liquor. And this, he agreed with himself upon asking, was in no way acceptable. So out he went, shrugging into the same black hunter's coat Sherlock had once said looked like he ought to have a pheasant stuffed in each pocket. John had asked him if he'd ever been hunting, which was met with a flat stare. "Inordinate waste of time, ample food supply on grocery shelves, and still too little understood about my own species' corporeal state to even think of frittering away my time poking at dead avian specimens," had been the dismissive answer. John considered taking the coat off, to chase away the memory, but he was already halfway out the door to the flat by then and an odd fear of neighbors beginning to read his drunkenness in his actions had begun to uncoil at the base of his spine. So he kept the coat on and stepped carefully down to the street, trying not to think of Sherlock's hands on either side of his shoulders, then his face. Spinning.

He tried to keep his distance from the cashier at the off-license, so as to hide the smell of his breath--though he doubted the scowling little man behind the register would have cared. Still, John felt guilty at being drunk at three o'clock. He felt guilty in advance at having to tell his therapist that he'd been drunk at three o'clock. He could try and avoid mentioning it, but he knew she'd ask about how he spent the anniversary of--of what it was the anniversary of. _No,_ he told himself, fiddling with his wallet. _Think it._ Of Sherlock's jump. Fine. Of Sherlock's death.

To John's horror his eyes began to mist over, and he all but threw the money at the checkout clerk in an effort to get out the door with his scotch before tears actually started to spill.

He turned into an alley before things could get worse. _Deep breaths, John. Deep breaths._ He had been good at not crying for a long time. Not since the funeral. It was a ridiculous time—a ridiculous place—to let it catch up to him now. He didn’t care what his therapist said. He’d come through a war. He’d watched friends die before. This one couldn’t—shouldn’t—be different. He was John Watson, a solid man and a good friend who knew how to let go. 

_Really._

Maybe it was the tears. Maybe it was the alcohol. If asked, later, he would have said the alcohol and never mentioned the tears. But whichever it was, his guard was down and he never even sensed the alleyway being blocked off. Never heard a sound until it was the hiss of breath in his ear. 

“I’ll be taking that, friend.”

Two hands, one reaching around his neck and the other for his wallet in his pocket. John lurched out from other the attempted choke-hold but his reflexes were slow; his body didn’t act the way he told it to and he misjudged the size of his attacker. His swing met empty air, and the follow-through flung him off-balance. He hit the ground in an explosion of scotch and broken glass, and he knew his wallet was gone before he registered that his rather expensive bottle had shattered. He could hear footsteps now, and retreating laughter, and then a pause. 

“Well now and what a shame it would be to leave a nice coat like that, eh?”

Footsteps returning, and John baring his teeth in a snarl and preparing to leap out of the way of the incoming foot, but then—stars, stars, nothing but stars. Rough hands on him but all he saw were stars. Spinning. 

_Can you remember it? Can you remember the pattern?_

John wanted to say he could, the words were on his lips, because there was something—something just beyond his grasp—that he knew he’d done to make it so. But it was gone, washed away by the sea of stars engulfing him in their horrible spinning. I can’t, Sherlock, he wanted to say. I thought I could but I can’t. I really can’t. 

_Really really really really._

****

The mobile woke him not once but twice, three times—he lost count. His skull was a bell clanging at the bottom of the ocean, and the rest of him was the battered clapper jangling back and forth. Finally John stumbled off the sofa to retch into the toilet, and only then, after reconsidering his initial urge to flush the mobile down along with yesterday’s bile, did he hit the answer button.

“John, it’s Greg. I’ve been calling you all day.”

“All day.” John squinted painfully out the window. It was bright, that was all he could tell. “It’s the fucking crack of dawn,” he said around a mouthful of cotton, because the fucking crack of dawn was what it felt like.

A moment of silence. “John, it’s five o’clock in the evening.” Then, when John said nothing in response, he cleared his throat. “Anyway I’m calling about what I think may be your jacket. Were you robbed recently?”

“My coat.” John wanted to retch again and slid closer to the toilet just in case. “Fuck my coat. My wallet! Do you have my wallet?”

“Er, no. Didn’t you call the police?”

“If you don't have my wallet, how do you know it’s my coat?”

“I…I was passing through the SVU department and thought I recognized that coat.”

“You recognized it.”

“Yes.”

“My coat.”

“Yes.”

“Out of all the coats in London. Wait, what the hell were you doing in SVU? Did those bastards steal a car, too?”

“No, I…I had a date, is all, and I was picking her up, and they were booking these guys as a came down. One of them had your coat on. Smelled awful.”

“Likely better than me.” John swallowed as another wave of nausea hit him. “Can I have it back, then?”

“Well of course. That’s why I called you. I’m glad we found it.”

“I could have done with my wallet, too, but thank you.”

“Thank my date. Shall I drop it by?”

“You can’t just leave work on my account—“

“It’s five o’clock in the evening, remember?”

“Oh. Right.”

Silence. “I tried to call you yesterday too, you know. You didn’t answer.”

“I know.”

More silence. John wished he could substitute his skull for the one on the mantle in 221B, the one—oh, no. Bad thought trajectory. 

“Right then, I’ll see you in a bit.”

****

Lestrade may have known the score but that was no reason not to make an effort. Part of one, anyway. His trousers still reeked of yesterday’s exploded scotch, but John managed to at least dig up a clean shirt and to gurgle away some of the vileness on his tongue before the door rang. He still kept the blinds shut and the lights off, though. Sensory details did not mesh well with the state of his stomach.

When he saw Lestrade standing there on his doorstep, awkwardly holding the coat at arm’s length, John felt he must let him in, whatever his wishes. “Come in, then,” he coughed roughly, squinting against the evening light. 

Lestrade entered gingerly, with the air of a cat about to get a soaking. “I haven’t been round since you moved in,” he said, carefully neutral. The same cardboard boxes that had marched upward in neat little piles when John had first moved in still stood there now, with only a skin of dust on them to mark the passage of time. “It’s…spacious.”

“Yes, well. I need room. To exercise. Or…something.” John scrubbed a hand through his hair, instantly regretting the motion, and made a note not to touch his skull in the near future. “My coat?”

Lestrade’s turn to cough now. “Yes, of course, here you go.” 

Lengthening shadows of twilight cloaked the room, but other than a faint whiff of unfamiliar body odor, the coat seemed none the worse for wear. John tucked it under his arm. “Can I get you some tea?”

The inspector shuffled his feet. His embarrassment at John’s surroundings was becoming infectious, and John wished he’d thought to meet him at the corner or something. “Oh no, you know. Date and all. I just wanted to get this back to you. I know it means—well, you know. It’s a nice coat and all,” he finished lamely. “You’re…taking care of yourself?”

“More or less,” John answered, striving desperately for a lightness he didn’t feel. God he was tired.

“Good, good. Listen John, I—“

“Greg.”

Lestrade grimaced at him.

“It’s all right. I’m fine. But I need you to go right now because I think I’m going to sick up.”  
“Oh. Right. I—feel better, John. Today and tomorrow. And, you know, whatever comes after that.”

_Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow._

John’s stomach lurched. He shouldn’t have drunk so much water all at once. “Will do. Have a nice date with SVU.”

Lestrade managed an attempt at a laugh before ducking out the door and back down the sun-striped street. When John closed the door he leaned back against it, grateful for the coolness of I pressing through his shirt, before his untrustworthy bowels necessitated a quick exit to the bathroom. Again. 

The next few hours were miserable for John. After phoning various credit card companies and reporting his cards stolen, his meager reservoir of normal-seeming engagement was spent. He tried watching crap television but it was too bright. Tried sitting on his sofa in the dark but it was too empty. Tried making tea, but one whiff of it emptied his stomach again. It was only by accident that he ended up coming in contact with his coat, long since forgotten and draped over one of the stacks of boxes. Stumbling out of the bathroom after another gut-wrenching spasm—just a spasm, now; there was nothing left to come up anymore—John knocked the coat off its pile and knelt unsteadily to pick it up. It was then that he felt the crackle of something in one of the pockets, through the cloth. _Aha,_ he thought. _Take something from me and I’ll take something from you._ With a grim smile of victory he removed what appeared, to his immediate disappointment, to be only a receipt, once crumpled but then folded back out and then once over, like a note. Carrying it into the kitchen to the light over the stove, he saw that there was indeed writing on the inside of the fold:

_Tiergarten. Come at once if convenient. –SH_

One beat.

Two beats.

Within seconds John’s phone was out, his fingers were flying and he was wound tight as the string on a violin, ready to snap. When the fifth ring tone cut off abruptly and gave way to what would have been Lestrade’s greeting, John didn’t even give him a chance to speak.

“What kind of fucking _mental_ joke are you trying to play here, Greg?” he hissed. He _hissed._ John Watson, a distant part of him noted abstractedly, did not hiss. “Because I am not. Laughing. Not one fucking bit.”

“John, what are you on about? I told you, I’m on a date—“

“The note, Greg. In my coat pocket. If that’s your idea of offering comfort to a friend I’d hate to see how you—just what the bleeding hell did you think you were doing?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! What note?”

John’s knuckles flashed white where he gripped the edge of the kitchen table. “The note. That you signed. From Sherlock. What kind of sick twisted prick does that?”

“From Sherlock?” The tiny gem of hope in that voice did far more than the shock—which could be faked—to plant a seed of doubt in John, though he was too riled to attend to it at the moment. “That’s impossible.”

“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed. I only watched him jump to his death in front of me. So what, did you all think you’d have a laugh, slipping a little tidbit of Sherlock into my pocket when you handed the coat over? Ha ha ha, look at poor sad sack John, maybe this will cheer him up?”

“That’s fucking ridiculous. Why would we—why would I do that to you John? I would never. I know nothing about any note.”

“It wasn’t in the coat when you searched the robbers?”

“They search for weapons, not notes, John.”

“But nobody pulled it out and thought, how odd, a note from the deceased Sherlock Holmes in the pocket of this jacket stolen from his old—“ he coughed thickly, harshly past the catch in his voice, “—from John Watson?”

“I wasn’t there. I only showed up as they were booking them.”

John’s voice was gravel. “Ask your date, Greg.”

“What?”

“Ask. Your. Date. You said she’s the head of SVU. She booked him. Ask her what was in my pocket.”

“I—all right, John, give me one moment.” A buzz of unintelligible sound—talking, the clink of cutlery, perhaps some distant music—swelled for a half-second before the phone’s programming drowned it out, waiting for the close-range voice it was designed to pick up. Lestrade was back in a few moments. “She says she knows nothing about it, either. They did search for wallets and other stolen items, but she didn’t remember anything about a note.”

“She didn’t remember? One of her people couldn’t have just popped it in there? Just for larks?”

“John, she doesn’t remember, but look—no one would do that to you.”

“Well someone did.”

The ambient noise swelled to fill the silence again, before the phone dialed it down past hearing. “What does the note say?”

“Tiergarten. It says to—“ Here he stumbled on the words that were so stupidly familiar, so dear to him it hurt, “to come immediately. If convenient.” 

“Tiergarten? As in, Berlin?”

“I don’t know of any other. But who cares?” John’s voice hardened, the soft spot of a second ago resoundingly conquered. I want to know whose idea of a prank this was, and I want to find them and break every bone in their body.”

“I swear it was no one I know in my division, and Patty swears it was no one in hers, either. Maybe one of the toughs had it on him the whole time, and we just missed the note in the search?”

“You’re the fucking police!”

“Yes, well…Sherlock thought us fallible. Maybe he was right?”

John ripped the phone from his ear and thumbed the Call End button, barely restraining himself from hurling the device against the wall. _Can’t break it, will need it abroad._ The thought had him sneering at himself. _Oh really, so I’m humoring these little shits, am I now?_ He was so angry he was shaking, and set the mobile down on a counter in case the urge to throw it overtook him again. Fucking hell. If he found who did this he’d kill them. He’d _kill_ them. He began to pace. What he needed to do was to talk to the lousy piece of shit who tackled him in the alley yesterday. He was still down at the precinct, wasn’t he? He ought to be. Lestrade had said they’d been booking him. Lestrade. _If this is his doing I’ll kill him, too._ In that moment he knew he meant it. But that tiny ray of hope he’d heard in Lestrade’s voice stabbed at him, as though someone had quietly coaxed a patch of briars into growing round his heart without him even knowing it. John had been listening so hard for amusement, disdain, triumph. Maybe body language was half communication and words only 10%, but the remaining 40% was tone and had he picked up any foul taste of _victory_ in Lestrade’s tone there wasn’t a power on earth that would have stopped John from marching into that restaurant and pounding him to a bloody pulp. 

And yet, that little hitch in Lestrade’s voice, that hesitant, almost sheepish thread of hope. 

John realized he’d backed himself into the corner of the kitchen, against the fridge, perhaps as some sort of defensive maneuver. So he could see anything coming at him. _But not this._ He slid down it, the gap between fridge and freezerbox scraping down the length of his spine until he came to rest on the linoleum with a thump. _Never this._ He closed his eyes, sadness welling in him like the fucking fountain of youth. It poured forth and pulled him along, himself a mere fleck in its flood. He had been done with this. Well, yes, there had been yesterday’s drinking, but it had been the anniversary and he had been _done_ with this. Mostly. Except for the spinning dreams that would seize him suddenly, like now. The two of them in the train yard, Sherlock’s hands on his shoulders, his face. The dim light swinging across curls and lips and pale, pale eyes.

_Can you remember it? Are you certain?_ Around and around and around.

“Oh yes, Sherlock,” John said aloud, his face buried in his hands. “I am so fucking certain.”

Only the fridge behind him responded, with the steady thoughtless humming that was its permanent contribution to conversation.

****

By dawn John had already stormed into, and been summarily thrown out of, the Met. No, he could not see his burglar of the previous day. Yes, they would arrest him if he kept on like this. No, they only hadn’t arrested him up until now because he was known to be a friend of Lestrade’s and, before him, Sherlock’s, and given that the anniversary of his death had just passed it was expected that the Sherlock Holmes blogger would be “going through a difficult time.” At this point John had swept everything off the nearest counter—which turned out not to be much; just a phone and some paperwork, which caused much less of a crash than he would have liked—but it was enough to get him escorted from the building. Out on the pavement, scrubbing his hand through his hair and explicitly _not_ pulling the crumpled receipt note out of his pocket to read it again, he debated the merits of marching back in and causing enough of a ruckus to get arrested himself. On the one hand, he might get the chance to interrogate the temporary owner of this coat. On the other hand, the likelihood that they’d place him in a cell close enough to enable communication with his intended target was slim, and then he’d just be wasting time that would be better spent buying at ticket to—

 _I am_ not _going._

“Not going where?”

John whirled and there stood Sally—derisive, snarky Sally who’d never liked Sherlock and likely hadn’t shed many tears over his death. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud and wished she hadn’t been the one to hear him.

“Nowhere,” John said flatly.

“If you mean back in there,” she said, nodding over her shoulder at the Met, “it’d be pretty easy to lock you up. I came down because they said you were knocking things off desks.”

“Just one desk. Just a few things.”

There was pity in her eyes. _Pity!_ John had only mildly disliked her before but it was curdling now into something darker. “But I’m telling you the guy knows nothing. The one who had your coat.” 

“You’re a homicide investigator! What would you know about it?”

“Patty.”

John frowned. “Greg’s date? What’s she got to do with it?”

“Greg’s—ah, well, about that.” Sally grimaced almost…guiltily, fiddling with the zipper on her jacket. “She took him out to let him down gently. She’s…not going to be dating him. Or any man, really.”

“Oh.” John rubbed his eyes; he was _so tired._ “What’s this got to do with me then?”

Her eyes flashed defensively. “I told you so you’d believe me. Patty says the guy knew nothing. I asked her to ask because—well, because Lestrade said he recognized the coat and I didn't understand how anyone could’ve nicked it off you.”

“It’s so nice to know I have a bunch of nannies clucking their tongues over me at the Met,” John snapped, his patience wearing thin.

“Yes, well, it’s nice to know you’ve adjusted so well to the loss of a friend who I didn’t recognize as a friend until it was too late,” Sally shot back, her eyes glistening now. “I worry about you, Watson. Everyone does. Everyone feels terrible.”

“Not as terrible as me.”

“You’re right. But so, when something pops up that has to do with you or Sherlock, we look into it. Like we did with this guy. And he’s just a sodding criminal, a couple break-ins and stolen cars to his name. No homeless network, no secret societies, nothing magical Sherlock set in motion before his death.”

“When did all this happen? Greg said he didn’t know anything last night.”

“He didn’t know anything last night. He was out being let down by Patty, remember?”

John turned away, his eyes straying down corniced facades and still mostly-dark windows to follow the cars as they ferreted through the streets. He didn’t like people caring about him. He didn’t like people he didn’t like caring about him, not like this. It made him feel guilty for not liking them, and anyway none of these feelings would help him sort out the note.

“You’re sure,” he said.

“Yes.”

“So now what?”

He meant it more for himself than for her, but she answered anyway. “If I were you? I’d go to Berlin.”


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is summoned. In a somewhat overgenerous sense of the word.

Berlin. He hadn’t been to Berlin since he was a young man, just after the Wall fell, when—like so many others—he rushed across the water to see what had been left of the corroded Iron Curtain. To see what life had been like in a place that the last four decades appeared to have forgotten.

He’d mentioned it once to Sherlock, actually—Sherlock who would have been too young at the time to take such a trip—and the man had had the gall to laugh. “What did you hope to find over there? Bent-over old ladies wearing the hammer and sickle on their lapels, shaking their fists at you? Young people clamoring for acid-washed jeans and the latest Michael Jackson album?”

John had been perplexed. “But they were clamoring for it. For everything we’d had that they didn’t. If they’d had the money and you didn’t mind baring a bit of skin they’d have bought everything you were wearing right off your back.”

“Off _my_ back? I doubt it.”

“Yes, well, maybe not you, but everyone else who went over and was at least wearing something from the current century. They felt left out. Left behind.”

“And you all went running over there to lap it up?”

“No—well, yes. Er. It wasn’t like that.”

John had let it drop at the time, and indeed had completely forgotten about the conversation until he was winging over the English Channel, against all but one of every instinct that evolution had left him. The instinct that told him to do it, the part of him that was trembling with trepidation and a desperate kind of giddiness, wasn’t something he wanted to look at too closely. He was a man of action, not self-reflection. That was the story he told himself, anyway.

He did not expect to doze on the flight, but the teenager next to him was plugged into her phone and exceedingly quiet, and the quilted fields that the orderly rows of waves quickly gave way to lulled him in a way that only steady breathing from the chrome-and-leather chair in 221B had, in the past. Before he knew it, German and then English voices over the speakers were encouraging everyone to turn off their mobiles and buckle up for the descent, and John realized he wasn’t ready. His sleep had been stone-cold, untroubled by dreams of spinning faces or anything else, and he had done nothing to manage his expectations—or bloodlust—in relation to this stupid note in his pocket. He had no idea what to think or where to go, beyond the obvious, and he had no idea what he’d do once he got there. He wished he’d never boarded the plane.

Almost.

Debarking was tedious, because John had to fill out all the paperwork declaring his gun again, on this end of his flight, before finally watching its case get pushed across the table toward him by a bored security guard. John didn’t speak German but he was fairly sure he heard the guard mutter to his companion something about “these English” and “James Bond.” John decided not to care. Had they received notes purportedly from a dead man in their coat pockets, he imagined they’d be bringing their guns to a rendezvous too.

_Is that what this is? A rendezvous?_ More like a reckoning. Because John couldn’t—thread of hope notwithstanding—give credence to the thought that Sherlock was still alive. It hurt. So instead, he told himself he was going to figure out exactly who it was who thought this joke so terribly funny, and to ensure by whatever means necessary that they never pulled it again. It dawned on him that he might have contacted Mycroft about this, but it was too late now and anyway he’d very likely be seeing Mycroft again shortly if he fired off a few shots in the heart of a foreign capital. No doubt Sherlock’s dour older brother would love that little diplomatic tangle.

He hailed a cab and stared at the cabbie’s eyes in the rearview mirror when he said “Tiergarten, bitte.” Nothing. No recognition, no niceties, just a few buttons pressed on the center console and the slow crawl into traffic. Just another foreign tourist off to see the sights. They were north of the city, and it would take longer to get in than John had thought—the old Templehof airport by which he’d entered last time had, apparently, been closed. This should have been fine with John, because time to think was exactly what he needed. But the giddy nervous corner of him that had insisted he get on the plane in the first place was now gaining traction in his head, performing a systematized takeover, and he found he couldn’t think much about the coming encounter beyond _What the hell am I doing_ and _I need to stop thinking about what the hell I’m doing or I’ll go insane._

The air had felt clammy on his way into the cab, and now the skies fulfilled this promise with a thoroughly urban drizzle. Watching the pavement and the people on it turn shiny and slick with rain, John wondered if Berlin cabdrivers were as given as those in London to find more…creative…routes for unsuspecting fares to their destinations. His suspicion deepened when, instead of the stern edifices of monolithic pre-war buildings, lush greenery closed in on the cab on either side, interrupted by the occasional pristine white monument depicting men frozen forever in various overtly heroic poses. 

“This is the quickest route to the Tiergarten?” he demanded in his best do-not-fuck-with-the-soldier voice.

“We are in Tiergarten,” replied the cabbie equably.

A hot and sudden rage seethed in John, and his eyes tore past the rain-streaked windows with a new desperation. The thought that he was gliding right past whoever had sent him this note set his blood boiling. “Stop, then, why don’t you! I only wanted to get to the Tiergarten!”

In the rearview mirror the cabbie smiled. “Do you have any euros?”

“I…” John huffed in frustration. “No. I don’t.”

“That is what I thought. So I am taking you to the bank just on the edge of Tiergarten, where you will be able to exchange for some euros. It is the prettier side for pictures anyway, yes? You would have missed the gate on the other side.”

John fumed but said nothing. If he flung open the door and stormed out of the cab, he’d only waste time getting arrested. If he demanded the cabbie let him out here he wouldn’t be able to pay and would still waste time getting arrested. He flirted briefly with the idea of just taking off into the greenery, but thought better of it. He knew nothing of the landscape or even which way they were facing. Such a course of action would again, in all likelihood, result in him wasting time getting arrested.

He fingered the note in his pocket for the twentieth time since they’d left the airport. _Come at once if convenient._ Bullshit. Utter bullshit, it was. He’d find whoever thought up this wretched joke and make them wish they’d never thought to fuck with him. Make them wish they’d never thought to falsify that _–SH._ It was too cruel.

The thickening crowds, even in the rain, heralded the eastern edge of Tiergarten and the Brandenburg Gate before he could see it properly. When he did it was from behind and, in the rain, the entire structure looked forlorn and forgotten, the monument to a lost empire that it very much was, even at its commission. Pedestrians thronged the cobblestones beneath its pillars, snapping photos and laughing even while they were getting damper every minute. The cabbie veered to the right, following the quarter-circle around and away from the gate, coming to rest finally in an idling lane that abutted the park to the south. 

“Just inside the gate, turn right and you will find DZ Bank. It is huge, you cannot miss it. There you will be able to exchange for some euros.” The cabbie looked steadily into the rearview mirror. “I will be needing your passport to ensure your return.”

John sighed. “Fine. Here.” 

“Thank you.” 

John stalked out of the cab, turning up his collar against the rain and dashing across the street, prompting a series of indignant honks from oncoming traffic. He did not care. This entire trip was lunacy; he never should have come. The delighted laughter of the tourists grated on his nerves and he did his best to march through them as though they weren’t there. _Come if convenient, my rosy red arse._ Once he cleared the gate, the cobblestones opened wider into a kind of plaza, ringed by austere white buildings to the north and south and opening up onto a vast of boulevard to the east. John turned right, as the cabbie had instructed, and laid eyes on what had to be the American embassy, judging by the flags and the amount of armed guards flanking its entrance. Next to it, with floors that receded away form the street with each successive story and walls and windows that undulated like waves, stood a yellowish building that to his relief bore a small but legible placard reading DZ BANK. 

“Thank god,” he muttered, before having the air knocked out of him by a small child.

“Mister please! Please mister, me mum needs help! You’re English, right? I need a doctor!”

John gasped for breath, fighting the spinning dream that threatened to well up and engulf him with the brief loss of balance. The little tyke had come flying at him out of nowhere, all splotchy face and dribbling nose, and hit him full force in the gut. “Wh-what? Who are you? Where is your mum?” _How do you know I’m English?_

“Please, she’s over here! She’s having a heart attack or something! Hurry!”

“Did you call the police? Anyone?”

“I can’t speak any German! Mum can and she’s dying! Please, mister, _hurry!”_ The child, mouse-haired and blue-eyed, tugged hard at John’s hand, and John abandoned thoughts of the bank and questions relating to the child’s powers of perception as his medical instincts went into overdrive. It didn’t matter how the child knew he was English; it mattered that somewhere a woman was having a stroke or a seizure or was going into cardiac arrest, and he might be able to help.

The child led him swiftly around the corner of one of the buildings that ran south in a line from the Brandenburg Gate, and skidded to a stop in front of a serious-looking metal door with a paperback book tucked into the frame at its base, propping it open. “She’s in here!” the little boy wailed, gulping a little on a sob that threatened to choke him, and tugged mightily on the door, letting John barrel in first.

Whereupon the child kicked the book to one side and let the door thud shut with finality, plunging John into total blackness.

“Hey—hey!” John could _feel_ his pupils dilating, flinging themselves wide to try and catch any stray ray of light. There was none. “Kid! Come back! Where is your mum?”

“Dead for many years, I’m afraid.”

John froze.

That voice.

_Oh fuck no._

He was not going to go crazy now. Not here. Not when some patient might need him. Not in the pitch-dark in an unknown building in a country where he couldn’t speak the language. 

_I am not hearing this._

“I beg to differ, actually.” 

_I didn't say anything,_ John thought distantly over the roar in his ears. _Not a thing._

“Yes but I can hear you thinking it plain as day. Surely you haven’t forgotten me so quickly.”

“Stop this,” John snapped, whirling around to feel for a door handle, a light switch, anything to pour light on this vile impersonator. His hands scrabbled over smoothness; whether poured concrete or metal he wasn’t sure. “Stop it. He’s dead and so are you, once I get my hands on you.”

“Oh, John. While endearing on some level, even you have to admit your idle threats are a touch more idle than you would like. Once you finally come to terms with the fact of my being very much here, killing me will be the last thought on your mind. The real question, though, is what are _you_ doing here?”

Still scrabbling for a handle, anything really in the complete dark, John slammed his fist into the wall in frustration. The thunk echoed in the blackness, suggesting a width and breadth greater than he’d anticipated. “Fuck you!” he cried, whirling, listening to his voice bounce off the walls and back into itself. “You’re dead!”

“Did Mycroft lead you here? I have to assume Mycroft, though I’d hate for him to know it; the smugness would be unbearable. Did he send you here to ferret me out before my work was done?”

There was no light. _No light._ John, hands balled into fists at his sides, marched gamely out away from the wall into the darkness, feeling the spinning dream waiting for him, threatening to take hold of his sense which had so little else to go on here. “Your _work,”_ he snarled. “Your work. Sherlock’s work. Is unfinished. Because he died a year ago. And he made me watch.”

“Yes, terribly sorry about that. Please understand it was a necessary evil. The lesser of the two, you might even say.” A pause, and John stared so hard at the spot he thought the voice was coming from—in front but also substantially above him, suggesting a balcony or a precipice of some kind—that his eyes began to water. “What do you mean, my work is unfinished?”

“We are not having this conversation. We are _not.”_

John was sure he heard a sigh from up above him. A sigh! “Oh John, you’re really not a fan of the obvious, are you. Always have to take the roundabout way to the easiest possible explanation.”

“Easiest—you’re _dead!_ I watched you— _unngh!”_

John had careened forward with his shout, intending to pound the impossibility of this whole affair into the skull of whoever was doing such a deadly Sherlock act, but after only a few steps his feet tangled up on uneven ground and he fell. Hard. As pain exploded in his shins, his ribs and the side of his head, the spinning began in earnest this time. 

“Are you all right?”

John’s harsh little laugh hurt his chest, his head, everything. _Fuck it, I’m certifiably crazy. Answering to a dead man._ “No, Sherlock. I am not all right.”

“Were you _running_ in here? In complete darkness?”

“What do you think?”

A pause, and some shuffling sounds John was barely aware of over the recurring images of the bricks of the trainyard, the hands on his shoulders, the passing of light over pale skin. _Can you remember?_ “Well that wasn’t very soldierly of you, was it?”

John wasn’t even sure where up and down parted ways anymore, and clung to the earth—angled, uneven; a staircase perhaps?—beneath him as though it could shake him off at any moment. Still he answered in a voice as hollow as his shout had been furious. “I haven’t been much of a soldier since you died.”

A snort. “John, don’t be melodramatic. I never died. Obviously.”

“I saw you.”

“Clearly you watched, but you didn’t see. Once you’ve eliminated the—“

“Fuck you, Sherlock.” John struggled to control his voice now; struggled to direct his attention past the image of Sherlock spinning before him that he knew was a trick memory— _Are you certain?_ —and toward the voice, and the source of the only other thing in this blackness besides himself. “Whether you threw a wax figure off the roof or flew away like a bloody bird, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that as far as everyone—as far as _I_ was concerned—you died that day. Nothing told me otherwise. And I had to live with that knowledge.”

“It wasn’t—“

“It _was_ knowledge. Fact. To me. Maybe if the situation had been reversed, you’d have seen the flaws in whatever the hell it was you pulled immediately. But I didn't. Because I’m me. So _terribly_ slow to see the obvious.” It was an awful laugh that escaped John then. Joyless. “What was obvious was that you made your best, your only friend watch you plummet to your death and then you left him like that. And you expect—you seem to think—that, if you were real, sending me on a wild goose chase across Europe with a stupid letter in my pocket for some fucked-up reunion in the pitch-dark would solve everything.”

The quiet stretched long and John saw Sherlock’s face, the memory of it, fixing him with those eyes, wanting so much for his brain to work in a way it didn’t. _But I found a way around that, didn’t I?_

“I didn’t bring you here,” the voice said at last, less insipid now. Perhaps even a little uncertain.

“The hell you didn’t.”

“I don’t know what letter you’re talking about. I would have been completely surprised by your arrival had I not had your passport watched. And then suddenly you were here. What was I to do? I had no idea what you’d been told or why you were so terrifyingly…close, all of a sudden. I arranged for the cabbie to pick you up, for the child to bring you here…and then my plans ended because quite frankly you were the last person I expected to see, John Watson. The last.”

John laughed the terrible laugh again. “Let me assure you, the surprise is mutual.”

“You still don’t believe it’s me, do you. You haven’t processed it yet. You think either that you’re going soft-headed or that I’m some masterful impersonator. I am, mind you—let’s be honest—but you think I’m someone who _isn’t_ me, impersonating me, and that simply won’t do.”

The pain in John’s head was worse than his ribs and his shins combined. He fought an urge to reach up and touch his face. He felt that if he moved, between the pain and the spinning, he might black out. And he wanted, some wretched part of him he couldn’t deny wanted, to be awake for this…this sham.

“Won’t it?” he croaked.

“You’ve cracked yourself on the steps, haven’t you? So like you, charging in with your gun drawn without a thought to what innocuous objects might be lurking to bring you down.” Step by step—each step audible in the darkness—the voice drew closer. “You’d think they’d teach you about these things in urban combat school, but I suppose one’s instincts dull over time. Take your gun, for example. You forgot it. The case, anyway—you haven’t had the gun since the airport. I made sure of that. I don’t fancy getting shot by my partner.”

“I’m not your partner.”

Step. “Of course you are. Or rather you will be again. You are now, even. I can’t pull this thing off alone.”

_Really really really really._ “What thing?”

Step. “The bank the cabbie directed you to? DZ Bank? It was a bit cheeky, sending you there, but there wasn’t a great deal of time in which to arrange a substitute meeting-place. It’s why I’m here, John. That bank.”

God, his head _hurt._ “What about it?”

“I, ah. I’m going to rob it.”

John's laughter reverberated throughout the chamber, sending spasms through his chest that rippled up to the pain in his head. He didn't care.

"You are a terrible actor, whoever you are. Sherlock Holmes? Rob a bank? You were doing all right up to that point but now it's just ridiculous."

"I'm not joking, John."

"And you expected me to--what--help you? Jesus. I hope you're not being paid too much for this little charade because you just blew it sky-high."

"I'm in something of a difficult position. I told you." A pause. Calculating. "This isn't just your emotions speaking, is it. You're hurt."

John's hands jerked. He lay curled up, on the side that was less bruised, and though his head spun he fancied he could gather his legs up under him and lunge if the situation demanded it. "Stay away from me."

"You're hurt, John. I can't have you hurt. I need your help." Step step step.

"Don't. Touch. Me." John felt the danger in his voice, wished there was more of it there. The dizziness was dampening his ability to command. He hated this impersonator so much. The arrogance, the foreknowledge, all so deliciously familiar (and if in his mind he carried this connotation, it swept right past him in a haze of pain and rage), so traitorously capable of evoking in him the desire to believe. But he had seen Sherlock die. He had been made to see it. And even if he'd slipped up in this dark hole and given the imposter the direct address sometimes, he'd be damned if he'd be toyed with anymore. 

"John. Would it help if you saw me?"

"You'll only give me a target."

"You don't have your gun."

"Do you really think I need it? Do you want to take that chance?" _Are you certain?_

"Yes."

Another step, and then another, very close now, and John--his other senses heightened, robbed of his sight--could smell wet wool; could hear the gritty scuff of tiny bits particulate stuck to shoe soles. If he held his own breath, he thought he could hear the breathing of another. He clenched his right hand, for all that it was on his worse-off side, and prepared to strike.

Only to be temporarily blinded by the flare of a bright blue rectangle, very close, so close it felt like it was burning into the back of his retinas.

"Christ, John, what have you done to your face?"

Grimacing against the glare, John cracked an eye open and fought to make sense of the blue shape floating in the otherwise total darkness. "How can you see, you bastard?" he hissed.

"I've kept my eyes tightly shut since the moment you entered the room. I didn't give the rhodospin molecules in my eyes the chance to acquire as much pigmentation." John could feel breath on his face. "Now, you're bleeding, and you need to let me see."

"No!"

John swung, swallowing a yelp as the motion pulled at his battered ribs. He felt his knuckles hit cloth and press down through it to flesh, but only glancingly. Above him, the blue rectangle swerved in an arc before disappearing, and he heard a hissing intake of breath that was not his own. 

Pressure, then, suddenly, on either side of his face, and the left side exploded in stars of pain. Gloves? No, just cold hands--cold, clammy hands cupping his face, holding it in place like so long ago.

"Listen to me, John Watson." That voice, _that voice,_ so tantalizingly, infuriatingly, unbelievably close now. "I know I made you watch. I know that was...that was not...the ideal course of events. I can tell you any tawdry fact about myself you care to know, to prove I am who I say I am, but right now you are bleeding from a head wound in the stairwell of a building not fifty yards from a bank I have to rob." The voice veered into a falsetto. "Why rob, Sherlock?" And back to the low growl. "Because I fell in with a bad crowd, John. Unavoidable, I'm afraid, given the circumstances." 

John tried to move his head, even with the pain and nausea the attempt wrought in him, but the hands held him still.

"I can't have you taking swings at me in the dark. I can't have you suffering a concussion. And I can't have you telling anyone where I am."

A hand retreated and the blue light, momentarily absent, appeared again, much closer, and though his head spun too much to make sense of the characters, John thought he could make out numbers. _A phone. Of course._ The light swung away from him, then, to reflect upward and crawl across a too-familiar chin, and lips, and--framed by curls that cast eerie shadows in the blue light--pale eyes, each lit at the center by tiny blue reflected squares.

Squares which spun, with the face, around and around and around, in an echo and a reenactment of a scene John knew his brain was fabricating to lessen the blows his body had suffered.

"I took a picture," he told not-Sherlock, whose not-Sherlock eyebrows then drew together in the strange light.

"You what?"

"I took a picture. You said all that about the average human brain's capacity for visual memory but it doesn't matter. I took a picture."

"You're not even here, are you. You're in shock, reliving something that happened years ago."

"You're dead," John reminded him.

Above him, not-Sherlock's lips pursed in a frown. Those pale eyes hardened, digging in a way that made John feel positively rummaged-through. "What would it take, John. What would--ah." The eyes snapped back to John's outer layer, or so it felt like, through the spinning. "I will do this once," not-Sherlock whispered. Why was he whispering? "You will likely not be able to process it and that is completely acceptable to me. What matters is getting you past this particular hurdle of disbelief and out of this wretched stairwell before the entire business falls apart." He paused for a split-second, seeming to gather resolution about him like a cloak. _No, like his coat._

John giggled. Or started to. And then—

And then, the light shrank, blocked out by a head of curls and that luminous face, like a phoenix in reverse--returning from blue flame into darkness--drew close, and there were _lips_ involved. Lips pressing against John's own, on which the giggle died and transformed into a startled squawk that never made it into the air, blocked as it was by lips most unexpected.

The spinning stopped.


End file.
